Products That Overwhelmed You

[Mark Hope]

Mage: the Ascension. I bought it when it came out, read it, ran a game. It was awful. Just awful. I spent the next year and a half re-reading, making notes, devouring the supplements that were coming out and tried again. The ensuing chronicle is still running

 

[MNblockhead]

Mage: the Ascension. I bought it when it came out, read it, ran a game. It was awful. Just awful. I spent the next year and a half re-reading, making notes, devouring the supplements that were coming out and tried again. The ensuing chronicle is still running

I tried to run a campaign using MtA 20th Anniversary edition and gave up after two sessions. It was mostly due to lake of time to learn another complex system and run a second campaign. But part of it was just being overwhelmed by the rules and the lore bloat. I'd love to play in a MtA game, but I don't see myself ever running it.

 

[MNblockhead]

For my current D&D Campaign, I'm running Rappan Athuk, which is one of Frog God Games massive adventure/setting books.

But I learn to not sweat it. If you make a mistake, well that's canon now. It makes the game yours and sometimes leads to new adventure hooks and stories that are better than what would have happened if you play it as written.

 

[Marc Radle]

I definitely agree that it was ahead of its time, but a lot of the rules were poorly-considered and poorly-drafted as a result, as well as needlessly numerous and complex. I have it out now and it's a mixture of some brilliant ideas but whole sea of mediocre implementation. The combat is close to incomprehensible.

Ah, memories

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Heh, same. Battletech, countless Palladium games, Megatraveller, MERP. I look at those books and wonder if we really ran them as written 100%, or just dropped the clutter like we did with AD&D 1e?

I used to really love games like Car Wars, Starfleet Battles, Battletech, etc., etc. but I'd seriously have to think twice about sitting down to play any of those games these days. I played Battletech around Christmas 2019 and about 3/4 of the way through remembered why I stopped playing it. And I feel the same way about a lot of RPGs I used to play. You couldn't drag me to a game of Champions or anything by Palladium. And I tend to favor rules light/medium games these days.

I really wish I could get a do-over on Mage: The Ascension. I wouldn't say I botched it, but strictly enforcing the Paradox rules really reduced the creativity that the game encouraged.

Mage: the Ascension. I bought it when it came out, read it, ran a game. It was awful. Just awful. I spent the next year and a half re-reading, making notes, devouring the supplements that were coming out and tried again. The ensuing chronicle is still running

 

[MarkB]

Anything that requires a detailed knowledge of Forgotten Realms lore.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Yeah, back in the 3.5e days some of my friends were very into Forgotten Realms, and the sheer volume of collected lore - just in the inch-thick sourcebooks, nevermind all the novels etc. - was really intimidating. Even as a player it felt tough to come up with a properly rounded character that didn't betray my ignorance, and it put me off trying DMing for awhile because it felt like I couldn't do justice to a setting without having all that knowledge at my fingertips.

 

[aramis erak]

Heh, same. Battletech, countless Palladium games, Megatraveller, MERP. I look at those books and wonder if we really ran them as written 100%, or just dropped the clutter like we did with AD&D 1e?

For Palladium, the one saving grace is that the rules are pretty damned light. Almost no feat-like abilities. Char Gen is dead simple. (time consuming, but simple.) The majority of the rules complexity is a simplistic combat system that has a lot of "A: Hit! B: Dodged!".

That simplicity resulted in most Palladium players playing the rules close to written by most groups.

 

[pemerton]

I was overwhelmed by Classic Traveller when I first read it. I think it's a great RPG, and have been playing it regularly for the last two or three years; but it doesn't provide a very good introduction or explanation of what play is mean to look like. The contrast with Moldvay Basic, which I got a few years later, is pretty marked.

The first time I read HeroWars I found it pretty hard to follow. Reading reviews and commentary around that game and similar systems made a big difference, and while I've still never played it HeroWars and its successor HeroQuest were important resources for me in GMing 4e D&D.

 

[Henry]

Star Fleet Battles in the 1980's.

SFB was one of the few game systems I’ve ever seen LITERALLY written like a 1970s era technical manual, with ”Section 1.7.2 subsection T” style language. Blew me away the first time I saw it, even though it wasn’t that much harder to understand than old school Battletech - just more like Battletech cranked up to ”11” on a scale of 1 to 10.
Quote from the Wikipedia article for context:

Since the introduction of Commander's Edition the rules have been organized with lettered major chapters, followed by a number to indicate a major rule. Then follows a decimal, and a series of numbers indicating the breakdown into subsections. (For instance, (D6.683) is the third subsection of (D6.68) Disrupted Fire Control, which is the eighth subsection of (D6.6) Active Fire Control, which is the sixth section of (D6.0) Fire Control Systems, which is the sixth rule in (D0.0) Combat.)

 

[Maxperson]

SFB was one of the few game systems I’ve ever seen LITERALLY written like a 1970s era technical manual, with ”Section 1.7.2 subsection T” style language. Blew me away the first time I saw it, even though it wasn’t that much harder to understand than old school Battletech - just more like Battletech cranked up to ”11” on a scale of 1 to 10.

See, Battletech I took to very easily. Maybe it was just the different styles of writing.